[Torg] Improving Attributes in play: Edges

[Travis James Hall]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: torg-bounces at justintimeadventures.com 
> [mailto:torg-bounces at justintimeadventures.com] On Behalf Of 
> Sam Frazier II
> Sent: Saturday, 15 November 2008 11:00 AM
> To: torg at justintimeadventures.com
> Subject: Re: [Torg] Improving Attributes in play: Edges
> 
> A trained skill costs twice as much as untrained skills, 
> whether you are first learning them or upping an add.  

No, it doesn't - not by the book. "To increase a skill costs a number of
Possibilities equal to the skill add purchased. [snip example] To gain the
first add of a new skill costs two Possibilities if your character can find
a teacher, five Possibilities if self-taught. Gaining a skill that cannot be
used unskilled costs five Possibilities if taught, 10 if untaught. If a
skill requires knowledge not native to your character's cosm the cost of
learning the skill is doubled." Torg Rulebook, page 20, third column.

There's a similar description in 1.5.

Are you using a house rule in your games?


> A teacher halves the cost of learning skills.

Again, not by the standard rules.

> >>>As far as balance, as I said, we have been playing with 
> this mod for over a year and it plays well in practice.  <<<
> 
> It is comendable that it is working for your group. I'm glad 
> to hear that, after all the point of the game is to have fun. 
> But when I look at it, and I see how I and my group would use 
> it, I see nothing but an abusable system to Munchkin behind. 

In some groups, "plays well in practice" means "abusable (and abused) as all
hell, but we don't care because look how cool our characters are".

On the other hand, within a single game, this system probably isn't going to
cause too many problems. Why? Because it is so abusable that every player
will use it - there really is no reason not to. And since the cost is the
same regardless of the initial character build, the munchkining will be
evenly distributed across the characters.

> Just give them an extra attribute after the first handful of 
> adventures. It is easier. This is....scary.

That's not the worst idea I've heard. It'll have pretty much the same
effect, and it's simpler.

Benn, Sam has screwed up a couple of details, but has argument is
essentially correct. It looks like you've decided that you don't see much in
the way of attribute increases, believe this to be a problem, and solved it
by making attribute increases cheap. Now everyone has attribute increases.
Problem solved, right?

Well, no. In a good system, there will be several options, and each will be
better in certain circumstances, or in order to achieve certain results.
There will be pros and cons to each approach. This should result in a
variety of strategies for spending Possibilities (or XP or CP or whatever
your system uses to regulate improvement).

With this, you don't have such pros and cons. The first time a player
decides to increase an attribute, he will - not question about it - use an
edge. It is so much cheaper that there is absolutely no chance he will buy
up an attribute the regular way - not unless you are playing an extremely
unusual game in which starting with a 1 in an attribute is really viable.

Given five Possibilities to spend after a character's first adventure,
there's virtually no chance those Possibilities will be spent on skills,
either.

Now, it could be argued that attributes are too expensive to raise (compared
with skills). Sam tells us about how rarely he sees attribute increases, and
this is the reason. Going from 8 to 9 in an attribute costs 27 points, which
is enough to raise six skills from +3 (starting max) to +4. It's a rare
character for which it won't be cheaper to raise the skills while achieving
largely the same results in actual play. It is advanced characters, whose
skills will be much higher (and with correspondingly higher costs to improve
further) who will be increasing attributes, generally.

But if you want to make the point at which players will start seriously
considering attribute increases to come earlier in the game while still
retaining balance (that is, pros and cons for each option), your edge system
isn't a good way to do it. You would be better off revising attribute costs.

For example, the cost to raise an attribute could be 3*(new value - 4), so
that raising an attribute from 8 to 9 costs 15 Possibilities. This is very
similar to the cost of raising all Spirit skills from +3 to +4. So now, the
tipping point for when raising an attribute becomes cheaper is around the
point when the character would otherwise be wanting to raise around four
skills to +4, whereas before it would have been around when the character
was wanting to raise those same skills to +7.

You'd have to fiddle around with the values to get a system calibrated right
(for whatever definition of "right" you have), but a big part of why we
don't see many attribute raises is simply because attributes start so much
higher and the lower end of the attribute scale is barely used. Compensate
for that, and you will see more attribute raises.

(Just be a touch careful of such recalibrations, because the fact that the
Rulebook has 17 skills under Dex and two skills under Strength means that
fiddling with relative costings of attributes can see odd effects if done
wrong.)

Travis Hall